Warren mayor blasts Forbes list of miserable' cities

Forbes magazine has ranked Warren as the seventh-most miserable city in the country.

The magazine studied nine factors — including violent crime, unemployment and home prices — of the 200 largest metro areas in the U.S.

“Like Detroit, the Warren metro has seen home prices collapse — off 53 percent the past five years,” the magazine wrote. On its website, Forbes included a photo showing a person wearing a United Auto Works Local 909 jacket with a “length of layoff” image projected on a wall at a UAW hall.

Detroit tops the magazine’s 2013 list of the nation’s most miserable large cities. Flint is second.

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Inclusion in the dubious list has Warren Mayor James Fouts seeing red. He questioned the magazine’s methodology, and believes that by any combination of measurements, Warren doesn’t belong on it.

“I view Forbes magazine as an eastern, elitist magazine that is completely out of touch with the geographic and economic climate of the entire state,” Fouts said.

The mayor wondered how Warren could be on the list, pointing out that:

General Motors plans to invest $500 million at the GM Technical Center and the Powertrain Division on Mound Road.

Chrysler Corp. LLC is adding a third shift at its truck assembly plant.

Walmart plans to open a new store where it had shuttered one at 12 Mile and Van Dyke, and home improvement chain Menard’s plans to build a new store less than two miles to the north.

Crime has fallen 11 percent, including no homicides in 2012 after having 11 the previous year.

Fouts, currently in his second term as the top elected city official following 26 years as a city councilman, also noted that Warren purchased four new fire engines last year after getting six new EMS rigs. He pointed out that voters in the past two years have approved millage increases for police and fire, local street repairs and the libraries.

“If this was a miserable city, I would’ve been thrown out of office,” Fouts said.

The magazine studied the 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas and divisions in the U.S., each with a population of at least 259,000. Warren’s population was 134,056 according to the 2010 Census. That was a 3 percent drop from the 138,247 in 2000.

In its data study, Forbes combined Warren, Troy and Farmington Hills.

Fouts questioned the magazine’s geographic groupings, emphasizing that Warren and Detroit are neighboring cities, but neither Troy nor Farmington Hills are contiguous with his city. The mayor said the magazine should have studied figures for all of suburban Detroit.

In addition to violent crime, jobless rates between 2010 and 2012 and home prices, Forbes in its annual study also examined foreclosures (Warren had approximately 3,500 houses at some stage of foreclosure two years ago); property and income taxes; commute times and weather. Responding to reader feedback following last year’s list, political corruption and success of professional sports teams were dropped from the data. Data on net migration was added as a new factor for 2013. All data metrics are weighted equally in the final scoring, according to Forbes.

Detroit — which was ranked as the second-most miserable city in 2012 — still would have topped the misery list this year under the previous methodology, the magazine reported.

Last September, business magazine Barron’s listed Warren in the top 10 U.S. cities in rising home values. The publication predicted Warren’s house prices would jump 3 percent in the first 12 months, 3 percent during the first 2-year period, and 5 percent overall over three years.

Warren scored 10th-worst on the Forbes misery index in 2012. Fouts said he complained to the magazine and invited the publication to send a representative to visit.

“I sent them a letter and they did not respond,” he said.

For 2013, Stockton, Calif., — the largest city to file for bankruptcy last year and which had the highest foreclosure rate in the county and in the top 5 in unemployment and crime — is ranked as the eighth-most miserable city.

For the complete list of the 20-most miserable cities, go to www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen.